Changsha: The Japanese Withdrawal

By October 10, 1939, the Japanese 11th Army had completed its withdrawal from northern Hunan province, and Chinese forces had regained all their former positions. The retreat ended an abortive attempt to capture Changsha and the area around Tungting Lake. Chinese Nationalist forces under General Xue Yue had repelled the Japanese and won the First Battle of Changsha. The date marked the close of an operation that had begun on September 17. The Japanese advance had not secured its principal objectives. [Source 1](https://www.onwar.com/wwii/chronology/193910.html)

The Japanese force numbered 120,000. Chinese troops defending Changsha ambushed it, and the Japanese lost large quantities of arms as well as men. Western estimates put Japanese losses at 30,000 to 50,000 killed and wounded; Japan admitted far fewer. Those figures are estimates, not counts of identified dead. The same account described the fight as the Japanese expeditionary force’s first major setback against Chinese Nationalist forces since the fighting had begun two years earlier. The withdrawal therefore concluded a failed offensive, not a capture of the city followed by a later reversal. [Source 1](https://www.onwar.com/wwii/chronology/193910.html)

Changsha was the capital of Hunan province, and the Japanese operation had aimed at both the city and the Tungting Lake area. The Japanese 11th Army’s withdrawal brought that attempt to an end. The source does not describe the movements of individual formations or give a precise route for the retreat, so the useful detail is the larger one: Japanese forces had gone into northern Hunan seeking to seize ground, and Chinese defenders had forced the operation to fail. The Chinese victory belonged to Nationalist forces under Xue Yue, rather than to a general, unnamed resistance. [Source 1](https://www.onwar.com/wwii/chronology/193910.html)

The chronology treated the battle as a major Chinese Nationalist victory and emphasized the cost to the Japanese expeditionary force. It recorded the ambush, the estimated deaths, the loss of arms, and the withdrawal that ended the campaign for Changsha and Tungting Lake. Those details made October 10 more than the final entry in a failed advance: it was the day by which the Japanese 11th Army’s retreat was complete, leaving the Chinese defenders in possession of the objective the attack had failed to take. There was no Japanese surrender, and Chinese losses were also heavy: about 40,000 killed, wounded and missing by Chinese count. The result was clear nonetheless: Changsha had not been captured, and the Japanese effort had ended in withdrawal. [Source 1](https://www.onwar.com/wwii/chronology/193910.html)